Dalek Supreme
Well-Known Member
Three reasons why one (not relying on faith) should be agnostic about the claim "Jesus certainly existed".
1) The Gospels/Acts are overflowing with signs of literary fabrication.
"Those who want to find a historical record in Mark face an even greater obstacle than the ambiguous evidence for Mark's literary borrowing of non-Jesus material to create Jesus stories. This obstacle is the fact that if Jesus' earthly ministry actually happened as Mark portrays it, the history of Paul's Gentile mission and the opposition it encountered would be incomprehensible. How could it be that neither Paul nor anyone who worked with him, nor his opponents, knew about Jesus' determined endorsement of a mixed community sharing table fellowship together? How is it that everyone somehow forgot that Jesus explicitly "declared all foods clean (7:19)"? In the pitched battles Paul waged against his Judaizing opponents in his epistles, any one of the many stories about Jesus' conflicts over Law observance would have been devastating evidence of the rightness of Paul's side, yet none are ever mentioned."
Tom Dykstra, Mark, Canonizer of Paul, pp. 229-230
"A raft of scholars, including Randel Helms, Thomas L. Brodie, John Dominic Crossan and others, have shown again and again how this and that Gospel passage likely originated as a Christian rewrite of this or that Old Testament passage."
Thomas L Thompson, Is This Not the Carpenter, pp. 113-114
"Yet, regardless of the difficulty, comparing Luke-Acts and Mark with this verifiable literary antecedent is worthwhile. A key reason is simple: in looking for a literary precedent to the Gospels there is no verifiable pre-Christian text which comes as close to any gospel as the Elijah-Elisha narrative does to Luke-Acts and Mark."
Thomas Brodie, The Crucial Bridge, pp. 97
"While issues with the gospels are certainly not enough to rule out the possibility that there was a historical Jesus behind the gospel story, it also cannot be said with certainty that there must have been one. The lack of primary sources and the problems with the Gospel stories alone, would seemingly justify having some doubt."
Raphael Lataster, Jesus Did Not Exist, Sources: We All Know They're Rubbish - pp. 35/73
"The use of cycles, parallels, repetitions, melodramatic characterization, stereotyped scene construction, inventing or presenting stories that replicate biblical narrative, unbalanced narrative with evident symbolic import, and a balanced structure-all these raise insurmountable objections. History cannot be quite so symmetrical. In addition there are any number of historical problems."
Richard Pervo, The Mystery of Acts, pp. 151
Note: Nowhere in Acts do the authorities show concern that Jesus escaped justice.
"Despite scholarly efforts to detect an underlying Aramaic original for Mark or Matthew, it is probable that all the evangelists wrote in the common (koinē) Greek of their day. Further, the vast majority of Hebrew Bible citations in the New Testament are taken from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (the Septuagint)."
"Large sections of Matthew, Mark, and Luke repeat stories about and sayings of Jesus in nearly identical words. Hence these three Gospels are referred to as the “Synoptic” Gospels. On a linguistic level, both Luke and Matthew improve on Mark’s style, smoothing out inelegant expressions and repetitions. Luke eliminates Mark’s characteristic use of parataxis (one short phrase following another without indicating how they are related) by employing balancing particles and subordinate clauses. Matthew follows Mark’s outline, though the insertion of considerable sections of discourse material may obscure that relationship for the casual reader. Luke knows most of Mark but has no parallels to Mk 6:45–8:26; whether Luke chose to omit this section or had a different version of Mark remains unclear. Detailed analysis of the traditions shared by Matthew, Mark, and Luke provides strong support for the view that Mark provided the template that Matthew and Luke revised, both correcting and smoothing out its language and expanding the Jesus material it contained."
"While the Synoptic Gospels have a close literary relationship, the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, presents a much greater puzzle. Its chronology of Jesus’s ministry differs from that of the Synoptics. In John, Jesus spends three years preaching, during which he journeys between Galilee and Jerusalem; in the Synoptic Gospels, he visits Jerusalem only once, at the end of a ministry that apparently lasted less than a year."
The New Oxford Annotated Bible NRSV, pp. 1380-1381
2) The earliest Xtian writings (Pauline Epistles) are odd when looked at closely. Paul is adamant that his Gospel is not from humans, but from scripture, and visions/dreams (Gal. 1:11-18, Rom. 15:4, 1 Cor. 15:3-
. A secret hidden through the ages now revealed (Rom. 16:25-26, 1 Cor. 2:6-7). Also Paul says his apostleship is by the same means as the founding Pillars (Gal. 2:6-. Paul's preexisting being was killed for looking like a human (Phili. 2:7), and his killers would not have killed him if they knew it was God's secret plan for mankind's salvation (1 Cor. 2:6-. This makes more sense when looking at the Joshua/Jesus in the OT who tricks Satan and is exalted by God. Note that these verses have what can be perceived as symbolisms for flesh (dirty clothes= sinful flesh & Five Kings= Five Senses that enslaves one to sin). So Zech. 3:1-9, 6:11-13, & Jos. 10:22-27 together symbolically has a Jesus in a flesh disguise getting hung in a tree, shoved into a tomb, and exalted by God to remove guilt of the land.
Zechariah 3:1-9
"1 Then he showed me the high priest Joshua (Savior) standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan (Adversary) standing at his right hand to accuse him. 2 And the LORD said to Satan, "The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this man a brand plucked from the fire?" 3 Now Joshua was dressed with filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. 4 The angel said to those who were standing before him, "Take off his filthy clothes." And to him he said, "See, I have taken your guilt away from you, and I will clothe you with festal apparel." 5 And I said, "Let them put a clean turban on his head." So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with the apparel; and the angel of the LORD was standing by.
6 Then the angel of the LORD assured Joshua, saying 7 "Thus says the LORD of hosts: If you will walk in my ways and keep my requirements, then you shall rule my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you the right of access among those who are standing here. 8 Now listen, Joshua, high priest, you and your colleagues who sit before you! For they are an omen of things to come: I am going to bring my servant the Branch. 9 For on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven facets, I will engrave its inscription, says the LORD of hosts, and I will remove the guilt of this land in a single day."
Zechariah 6:11-13
11 Take the silver and gold and make a crown, and set it on the head of the high priest Joshua son of Jehozadak (Savior Son of the Righteous God); 12 say to him: Thus says the LORD of hosts: Here is a man whose name is Branch: for he shall branch out in his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD. 13 It is he that shall build the temple of the LORD; he shall bear royal honor, and shall sit upon his throne and rule. There shall be a priest by his throne, with peaceful understanding between the two of them."
Joshua 10:22-27
"22 Then Joshua (Savior) said, "Open the mouth of the cave, and bring those five kings out to me from the cave." 23 They did so, and brought the five kings out to him from the cave, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Eglon. 24 When they brought the kings out to Joshua, Joshua summoned all the Israelites, and said to the chiefs of the warriors who had gone with him, "Come near, put your feet on the necks of these kings." Then they came near and put their feet on their necks. (see Psa. 110:1/Heb. 10:13) 25 And Joshua said to them, "Do not be afraid or dismayed; be strong and courageous; for thus the LORD will do to all the enemies against whom you fight." 26 Afterward Joshua struck them down and put them to death, and he hung them on five trees. And they hung on the trees until evening. 27 At sunset Joshua commanded, and they took them down from the trees and threw them into the cave where they had hidden themselves; they set large stones against the mouth of the cave, which remain to this very day. (see also Deut. 21:22-23/Gal. 3:13)"
3) Verses held up as undeniable evidences for an historical Jesus have plausible alternative explanations. The verse Gal. 4:4b "God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law," looks to have Jesus born of a woman, and is Jewish. But what Paul could mean is that "woman/law" is Divine Wisdom (Greek Sophia personified feminine wisdom/see Prov. 3:13-20, 8:1-36, Baruch 3:37, 4:1) in that Jesus was made all knowing unlike Adam. The verse Gal. 1:19 "but I did not see any other apostle except James the LORD's brother." is seen as a slam dunk for historicity. But Paul's theology is of spiritual kinship (Gal. 4:5-7) and everyone in Christ are brothers/sisters. Paul makes no distinction that this James is blood related to Jesus, and maybe "Lord's brother" is a cultic title? The verse Rom. 1:3b "who was descended from David according to the flesh" (2 Sam. 7:12) is good evidence for historicity. But 2 Sam. 7:12c "who shall come forth from your body," can mean God made a flesh body from David's semen for Jesus (it was a belief that the male seed contained the whole body). This is a convenient way to fulfill messianic prophecy for a celestial event instead of on Earth.
1) The Gospels/Acts are overflowing with signs of literary fabrication.
"Those who want to find a historical record in Mark face an even greater obstacle than the ambiguous evidence for Mark's literary borrowing of non-Jesus material to create Jesus stories. This obstacle is the fact that if Jesus' earthly ministry actually happened as Mark portrays it, the history of Paul's Gentile mission and the opposition it encountered would be incomprehensible. How could it be that neither Paul nor anyone who worked with him, nor his opponents, knew about Jesus' determined endorsement of a mixed community sharing table fellowship together? How is it that everyone somehow forgot that Jesus explicitly "declared all foods clean (7:19)"? In the pitched battles Paul waged against his Judaizing opponents in his epistles, any one of the many stories about Jesus' conflicts over Law observance would have been devastating evidence of the rightness of Paul's side, yet none are ever mentioned."
Tom Dykstra, Mark, Canonizer of Paul, pp. 229-230
"A raft of scholars, including Randel Helms, Thomas L. Brodie, John Dominic Crossan and others, have shown again and again how this and that Gospel passage likely originated as a Christian rewrite of this or that Old Testament passage."
Thomas L Thompson, Is This Not the Carpenter, pp. 113-114
"Yet, regardless of the difficulty, comparing Luke-Acts and Mark with this verifiable literary antecedent is worthwhile. A key reason is simple: in looking for a literary precedent to the Gospels there is no verifiable pre-Christian text which comes as close to any gospel as the Elijah-Elisha narrative does to Luke-Acts and Mark."
Thomas Brodie, The Crucial Bridge, pp. 97
"While issues with the gospels are certainly not enough to rule out the possibility that there was a historical Jesus behind the gospel story, it also cannot be said with certainty that there must have been one. The lack of primary sources and the problems with the Gospel stories alone, would seemingly justify having some doubt."
Raphael Lataster, Jesus Did Not Exist, Sources: We All Know They're Rubbish - pp. 35/73
"The use of cycles, parallels, repetitions, melodramatic characterization, stereotyped scene construction, inventing or presenting stories that replicate biblical narrative, unbalanced narrative with evident symbolic import, and a balanced structure-all these raise insurmountable objections. History cannot be quite so symmetrical. In addition there are any number of historical problems."
Richard Pervo, The Mystery of Acts, pp. 151
Note: Nowhere in Acts do the authorities show concern that Jesus escaped justice.
"Despite scholarly efforts to detect an underlying Aramaic original for Mark or Matthew, it is probable that all the evangelists wrote in the common (koinē) Greek of their day. Further, the vast majority of Hebrew Bible citations in the New Testament are taken from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (the Septuagint)."
"Large sections of Matthew, Mark, and Luke repeat stories about and sayings of Jesus in nearly identical words. Hence these three Gospels are referred to as the “Synoptic” Gospels. On a linguistic level, both Luke and Matthew improve on Mark’s style, smoothing out inelegant expressions and repetitions. Luke eliminates Mark’s characteristic use of parataxis (one short phrase following another without indicating how they are related) by employing balancing particles and subordinate clauses. Matthew follows Mark’s outline, though the insertion of considerable sections of discourse material may obscure that relationship for the casual reader. Luke knows most of Mark but has no parallels to Mk 6:45–8:26; whether Luke chose to omit this section or had a different version of Mark remains unclear. Detailed analysis of the traditions shared by Matthew, Mark, and Luke provides strong support for the view that Mark provided the template that Matthew and Luke revised, both correcting and smoothing out its language and expanding the Jesus material it contained."
"While the Synoptic Gospels have a close literary relationship, the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, presents a much greater puzzle. Its chronology of Jesus’s ministry differs from that of the Synoptics. In John, Jesus spends three years preaching, during which he journeys between Galilee and Jerusalem; in the Synoptic Gospels, he visits Jerusalem only once, at the end of a ministry that apparently lasted less than a year."
The New Oxford Annotated Bible NRSV, pp. 1380-1381
2) The earliest Xtian writings (Pauline Epistles) are odd when looked at closely. Paul is adamant that his Gospel is not from humans, but from scripture, and visions/dreams (Gal. 1:11-18, Rom. 15:4, 1 Cor. 15:3-
. A secret hidden through the ages now revealed (Rom. 16:25-26, 1 Cor. 2:6-7). Also Paul says his apostleship is by the same means as the founding Pillars (Gal. 2:6-. Paul's preexisting being was killed for looking like a human (Phili. 2:7), and his killers would not have killed him if they knew it was God's secret plan for mankind's salvation (1 Cor. 2:6-. This makes more sense when looking at the Joshua/Jesus in the OT who tricks Satan and is exalted by God. Note that these verses have what can be perceived as symbolisms for flesh (dirty clothes= sinful flesh & Five Kings= Five Senses that enslaves one to sin). So Zech. 3:1-9, 6:11-13, & Jos. 10:22-27 together symbolically has a Jesus in a flesh disguise getting hung in a tree, shoved into a tomb, and exalted by God to remove guilt of the land.Zechariah 3:1-9
"1 Then he showed me the high priest Joshua (Savior) standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan (Adversary) standing at his right hand to accuse him. 2 And the LORD said to Satan, "The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this man a brand plucked from the fire?" 3 Now Joshua was dressed with filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. 4 The angel said to those who were standing before him, "Take off his filthy clothes." And to him he said, "See, I have taken your guilt away from you, and I will clothe you with festal apparel." 5 And I said, "Let them put a clean turban on his head." So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with the apparel; and the angel of the LORD was standing by.
6 Then the angel of the LORD assured Joshua, saying 7 "Thus says the LORD of hosts: If you will walk in my ways and keep my requirements, then you shall rule my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you the right of access among those who are standing here. 8 Now listen, Joshua, high priest, you and your colleagues who sit before you! For they are an omen of things to come: I am going to bring my servant the Branch. 9 For on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven facets, I will engrave its inscription, says the LORD of hosts, and I will remove the guilt of this land in a single day."
Zechariah 6:11-13
11 Take the silver and gold and make a crown, and set it on the head of the high priest Joshua son of Jehozadak (Savior Son of the Righteous God); 12 say to him: Thus says the LORD of hosts: Here is a man whose name is Branch: for he shall branch out in his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD. 13 It is he that shall build the temple of the LORD; he shall bear royal honor, and shall sit upon his throne and rule. There shall be a priest by his throne, with peaceful understanding between the two of them."
Joshua 10:22-27
"22 Then Joshua (Savior) said, "Open the mouth of the cave, and bring those five kings out to me from the cave." 23 They did so, and brought the five kings out to him from the cave, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Eglon. 24 When they brought the kings out to Joshua, Joshua summoned all the Israelites, and said to the chiefs of the warriors who had gone with him, "Come near, put your feet on the necks of these kings." Then they came near and put their feet on their necks. (see Psa. 110:1/Heb. 10:13) 25 And Joshua said to them, "Do not be afraid or dismayed; be strong and courageous; for thus the LORD will do to all the enemies against whom you fight." 26 Afterward Joshua struck them down and put them to death, and he hung them on five trees. And they hung on the trees until evening. 27 At sunset Joshua commanded, and they took them down from the trees and threw them into the cave where they had hidden themselves; they set large stones against the mouth of the cave, which remain to this very day. (see also Deut. 21:22-23/Gal. 3:13)"
3) Verses held up as undeniable evidences for an historical Jesus have plausible alternative explanations. The verse Gal. 4:4b "God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law," looks to have Jesus born of a woman, and is Jewish. But what Paul could mean is that "woman/law" is Divine Wisdom (Greek Sophia personified feminine wisdom/see Prov. 3:13-20, 8:1-36, Baruch 3:37, 4:1) in that Jesus was made all knowing unlike Adam. The verse Gal. 1:19 "but I did not see any other apostle except James the LORD's brother." is seen as a slam dunk for historicity. But Paul's theology is of spiritual kinship (Gal. 4:5-7) and everyone in Christ are brothers/sisters. Paul makes no distinction that this James is blood related to Jesus, and maybe "Lord's brother" is a cultic title? The verse Rom. 1:3b "who was descended from David according to the flesh" (2 Sam. 7:12) is good evidence for historicity. But 2 Sam. 7:12c "who shall come forth from your body," can mean God made a flesh body from David's semen for Jesus (it was a belief that the male seed contained the whole body). This is a convenient way to fulfill messianic prophecy for a celestial event instead of on Earth.
